Time & Perspective Quote by Christine Lavin

The line lands because it refuses the clean, inspirational arc we expect from “making it” in music. Christine Lavin isn’t selling hustle culture; she’s naming the unglamorous knot at the center of a working songwriter’s life: you have to behave like a small business even when your product is supposed to feel personal, intimate, uncalculated.

Her phrasing sets up a balancing act and then undercuts it. “Setting goals” and “trying to be a business person” are the vocabulary of plans, metrics, and survival. Against that, she places “who you are writing songs for,” a deceptively simple question that contains everything artists fear: Are you writing for a crowd, a niche, an algorithm, a gatekeeper, your past self? The subtext is that audiences and marketplaces tug in opposite directions, and both can distort the work. The “who” is identity and community; the “business person” is compromise, strategy, and sometimes performance offstage.

The real bite comes in the pivot: “believe me, if you think I’ve got it down I don’t.” It’s a preemptive strike against the myth of the perfectly self-possessed artist-entrepreneur. Lavin positions herself not as a brand guru but as someone still wrestling with the same contradictions as her peers. That humility is also a quiet critique of an industry that increasingly demands musicians be CEOs of their own careers.

Calling it a “constant struggle” isn’t self-pity; it’s a claim of ongoing vigilance. Authenticity, in her telling, isn’t a vibe you achieve. It’s something you keep renegotiating every time money, attention, and ambition enter the room.